The Best Queer Internet Writing of 2017

By Meredith Talusan

December 30, 2017

Quench your thirst… for great words and ideas.

In the midst of an administration that stands against so much of what LGBTQ+ folks believe in, the regular presence of excellent queer writing from the internet filled me — and I hope other queer people — with quenching doses of hope in 2017. One of the wonderful things about the internet is how increasingly accessible great writing has become, so you don’t need to try to thumb through files or root through bookshelves to be inspired. Here are some of my favorites.

It’s rare for essays to punch the brain, heart, and gut all at the same time. Yet Harris’s evocative writing coupled with a pressing political subject that preoccupies so many queer people of color leaves us with an essay that exemplifies the best of internet writing, speaking to the moment yet sure to stand the test of time, seemingly about a single topic yet cuts to the very core of what it means to be queer and POC. Published in January, “Decolonizing My Desire,” became my touchstone for the rest of the year.

Best-known as an actress and screenwriter for the Emmy-nominated web series Her Story, Richards continues to probe the nuances of dating and having sex while trans with this piece about the not-so-noble reasons why she ended up having sex with a cab driver without disclosing her gender history. In so doing, she underlines that trans people don’t have to be paragons of virtue to deserve basic and essential respect, that we make our own mistakes, and that whatever the black-and-white legal and political implications of our actions are, they will never be able to capture the complicated situations we find ourselves in as we negotiate our dating and sex lives.

This stellar reported essay is mainly about Haile’s experiences as a black woman hiking the Appalachian trail and encountering both histories and realities of racism, but the fact that she’s also queer contextualizes the experience of our community in relation to those whose skin color exposes them to danger simply by being outdoors. In her unpacking of how black people have been socially denied access to open American spaces, there is the shadow of relative privilege in queer people who are able to visibly pass as “normal.”

In this must-read blog post for all journalists, Wallace argues that especially in the age of Trump, the model of journalistic objectivity is outdated, and is a particular hardship for reporters who belong to marginalized groups. “The idea that I don’t have a right to exist is not an opinion, it is a falsehood,” Wallace writes as he illustrates how as a transgender man, he shouldn’t be forced to report on views that invalidate his existence for the sake of a journalistic principle. Wallace was subsequently fired from his reporting job at the national radio show Marketplace because producers claimed that he violated their policies by stating his opinions publicly, manifesting the very burden Wallace describes in his post.

Having grown up in wheelchair and unable to go to the bathroom in elementary school, McMahon’s essay lays bare the psychological and logistical links between the ways that disabled people were seen prior to the passing of the American Disabilities Act and how trans people are seen today. Just as parents saw McMahon as a disturbance who would take away from their own “normal” children’s enjoyment of school, trans people too are seen the same way, without any acknowledgment that both groups are only burdens because public spaces are built for the majority. In unpacking the comparison between disabled and trans people when it comes to bathrooms, McMahon makes the compelling case that no human being should be punished simply because they deviate from the norm.

Don’t be so old-fashioned — podcasts count as writing too! Every episode I’ve heard of this WNYC show has been stellar, but the one that will be forever embedded in my mind is Kathy Tu’s story about coming out to her mother across a cultural and immigration gap, rendered so intimately in the shifting registers, accents, and timbres of voices that permeate this episode. After thinking the coming-out story dead, Tu’s account gives me faith.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding trans filmmaker Reina Gossett’s accusations that David France stole from her work in making his own Netflix documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, Mock breaks through the muddy legal and ethical waters to assert vital truths in spite of France’s denials. First, that people from within marginalized communities often perform unpaid labor that privileged creators appropriate without acknowledgment. And second, that trans people themselves must take the lead in telling our own stories, yet are so often shut out of opportunities because creators who are not trans want to tell those stories for us, and are often better-positioned to do so because they have not had to deal with the same degree of discrimination. As one of the leading trans voices of our movement, Mock’s unflagging support of Gossett also asserts the spirit of cooperation within the trans community, in that hope that someday, trans folks telling our own stories will no longer be seen as exceptional.

An immersive study of loneliness among gay men that seamlessly blends autobiography and reportage, Hobbes underlines how the seemingly liberated lives of the most privileged group among the LGBTQ+ community is still fraught with pressures that lead to despair. Judging from the internet reaction, it’s an experience that resonates for many.

In a series of short vignettes that gain an accumulated, gut-wrenching momentum, Hudson undoes the assumption that queerness makes one exempt from the societal pressure to be thin, as she discusses her ritual of habitually listing everything she’s eaten to herself before she eats something else. But while straight cis women often feel that pressure as a submission to the male gaze, Hudson sees her own struggle with her size as a reflection of societal expectation that in order to be androgynous, a person needs to be thin and curveless, as if an androgynous identity can only belong to one particular body type.

Taylor announced himself on my Twitter timeline this year with this critique of the straight gaze in queer fiction that is so impressively scathing in the matter-of-factness of its tone. In calling mainstream readers to task for endorsing queer fiction only as it either details suffering or reflects its own values but with an exciting twist, Taylor fashions space for a gay fiction that refuses to pander to straight people. (And by the way, he also wrote this stellar essay about queer singlehood for them.)

In a succinct and precise exploration of what it means to be found beautiful on the street as a fat black trans femme, Lewis makes the important argument that trans people who are often made to feel undesirable should be given space to appreciate the attraction of others. At the same time, that appreciation shouldn’t come at the cost of trans lives, as the murders of trans women and femmes of color remain a persistent crisis.

In the two months since them. first launched (has it only been two months?), the piece of writing that has stayed foremost in my mind is Chee’s essay on Kevin Spacey. Recalling his own history of abuse, and his determination to live openly as a gay man, Chee stakes his claim for what it means to be queer and choose to be open about it, and to confront Spacey’s place in the LGBTQ+ community after he announced that he was gay, amid Anthony Rapp’s allegation that Spacey assaulted him when he was 14. Yet somehow, this description doesn’t capture how adeptly Chee weaves his own experiences into the larger conversation about sexuality and abuse that Spacey provoked. It’s precisely this feeling of elusiveness, how any description is reductive, that is the hallmark of a great piece of writing.

Meredith Talusan is Senior Editor for them. and an award-winning journalist and author. They have written features, essays, and opinion pieces for many publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, VICE, Matter, Backchannel, The Nation, Mic, BuzzFeed News, and The American Prospect. She received 2017 GLAAD Media and Deadline Awards, and has contributed to several books, including Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America.